Save Family Voices

Tennessee is home to the very first statewide Family Voices chapter, a fact that fills the Coalition with great pride; however, Family Voices future is dimming.  The US Congress has failed in repeated attempts to extend funding to save Family Voice’s Family-to-Family Health Information Centers (F2F HICs).

What are Health Information Centers?

Family-to-Family Health Information Centers provide families with information about sources of care for their children/youth and sources of financing that care.  This information is provided by individuals with first-hand experience in navigating the complex system of health care and health care financing for their own children with special health care needs.

Moving Forward

Having failed to extend funding through traditional legislative processes, families and advocates around the country are taking a new approach to funding.  They are lobbying Congress to include funding in one of the health care reform bills that are now being debated across the country.

Just this past week we received word that funding was added to the Senate Finance Committee’s health care reform bill; however, details change day to day so there is no guarantee the funding will remain.

What can you do?

1. Send an email or call your Congressional Representative and Senator asking them to support health care reform.
2. Ask them to ensure that reform includes funding for the Family-to-Family Health Information Centers.  Let them know that without funding in the health care reform legislation the program could disappear next year.
3. Talk to friends and relatives about Family Voices and the Family-to-Family Health Information Centers.  Then ask them to contact their Congressmen.

For more about the effort visit: http://familyvoices.org/TakeActionHCR.php

For more information about the national effort

Brooke Lehmann – (202) 333-2770 or blehmann@familyvoices.org
Janis Guerney – (202) 546-0558 or jguerney@familyvoices.org

For more information about how you can help in Tennessee

Julie Sullivan – (931) 212-5557 or fvtn@tndisability.org
Courtney Atnip-Jenkins – Courtney_j@tndisability.org

Tennessee Senators

Lamar Alexander - (202) 224-4944 and his contact form

Bob Corker - (202) 224-3344 and his contact form

Tennessee Representatives

Phil Roe, 1st District - (202) 225-6356 and his contact form

John Duncan Jr., 2nd District - (202) 225-5435 and his contact form

Zach Wamp, 3rd District - (202) 225-3271 and his contact form

Lincoln Davis, 4th District - (202) 225-6831 and his contact form (must jump through some hoops)

Jim Cooper, 5th District - (202) 225-4311 and his contact form

Bart Gordon, 6th District - (202) 225-4231 and his contact form

Marsha Blackburn, 7th District - (202) 225-2811 and her contact form (must jump through some hoops)

Steve Cohen, 9th District - (202) 225-3265 and his contact form